- Pope and co-founder of Anthropic to launch pontiff’s AI encyclical on May 25
Source: Associated Press
“Pope Leo XIV and the co-founder of artificial intelligence company Anthropic will launch the pontiff’s first encyclical on May 25, a document on the care of human dignity in the era of AI, the Vatican said Monday. Anthropic has billed itself as the AI company that puts safety and risk-mitigation at the forefront of its research. As a result, the presence of Anthropic’s Christopher Olah at the Vatican is significant, and suggests that the U.S. pope’s position on AI will become a new flashpoint with the Trump administration. … The pope’s presence at the launch of the document, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) is also significant, since such presentations are usually conducted in the Vatican press room with a few selected officials and invited guests who answer reporters questions about the document.” (05/18/26)
- NY: Mangione prosecutors can use gun and notebook as evidence, judge rules
Source: NBC News
“The judge overseeing the state murder trial of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, ruled Monday that prosecutors can use a gun and a notebook as evidence. Judge Gregory Carro’s ruling effectively rejected Mangione’s lawyers’ argument that those items were seized illegally, delivering a partial victory to prosecutors. However, Carro said prosecutors cannot admit items found in Mangione’s backpack when he was arrested at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania two years ago, including a loaded magazine, a passport and a wallet. Authorities have previously described the red notebook found in his bag as a ‘manifesto.’ Mangione’s arrest came five days after Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel as he walked to an investors’ conference.” (05/18/26)
- Australia: Regime orders “China-linked” firms to sell stakes in rare earths miner
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“Australia ordered the shareholders linked to China to sell their stakes in Northern Minerals, a company that is developing a rare earth mine. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he had issued orders on Monday following concerns that Chinese investors had tried to take control of Northern Minerals. The Australia-based mining company is developing its Browns Range project in the far north of the state of Western Australia to mine significant reserves of dysprosium and terbium. The six companies are to sell their stake within two weeks. Chalmer’s decision aims to protect the country’s national interest and to ensure compliance with its foreign investment framework, he said in a statement.” (05/18/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/australia-orders-firms-to-sell-stakes-in-rare-earths-miner/a-77192174
- Will Affordability Bankrupt President Trump?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by James Bovard“Trump constantly blusters as if he deserves the Nobel Prize for Economic Triumphs, just like he supposedly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. In a January speech in Iowa, he doubled down on his triumphs by referring to himself in the third person: ‘Just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming …. Incomes are rising. Investment is soaring. Inflation has been defeated.’ Unfortunately, Trump’s record on the economy is as shaky as his claims that he ended eight wars. The core wholesale inflation rate rose in January at an annual rate of 9 percent. ‘Howl louder’ has been the president’s response. Beginning late last year, the affordability issue made Trump schizophrenic.” (05/18/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/will-affordability-bankrupt-president-trump/
- The dangerous allure of a post-Netanyahu Israel
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man“Israel is officially entering election season, and with it comes the perennial and inescapable excitement among some progressives in the United States who are eager to see Israeli voters send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu packing. That excitement, however, is an illusion. It is built on a belief, long clung to by American supporters of Israel, that Israel without Netanyahu would somehow become a liberal democracy that aligns more with their own values. That illusion is based on a false view of Israeli policy in the decades before Netanyahu’s reign.” (05/18/26)
- What do “laws” prove?
Source: Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog
by Kent McManigal“In a discussion about the effect of self-driving cars on cops and their DWI grift, someone said, ‘Self driving cars are a fantasy. They do not have the ability. They can assist but cannot drive themselves.’ Now, this is objectively not true. Someone else pointed out. ‘I’ve seen them driving around downtown, sans human driver.’ The Luddite’s response. ‘They are not reliable. Several have ran over pedestrians and they have been the cause of accidents.’ I pointed out, ‘Humans are even less reliable, unfortunately.’ So, he responded, ‘If that is true then why is it required for a person to be at the wheel and paying attention while the vehicle is driving itself?’ … That ‘laws’ require something dumb isn’t an argument. It proves nothing.” (05/18/26)
https://kentmcmanigal.blogspot.com/2026/05/what-do-laws-prove.html
- Stop fearing a strong Russia — start fearing a dying Russia
Source: The Hill
by Emzari Gelashvili“Russia entered the war at maximum sustainable capacity without general mobilization. After years of attrition, it has burned through most of its Soviet-era equipment stocks. Given Russia’s weakened state, a conventional confrontation with NATO is not only unlikely now, but it has become almost impossible — prohibitively expensive and demographically unsustainable. The real strategic risk is not a confident Russia launching a conventional assault on the Baltics. It is the behavior of a cornered, nuclear-armed state that perceives itself in terminal decline. A leadership facing military failure and domestic crisis may calculate that tactical nuclear signaling or hybrid escalation offers its best chance to reset the board.” (05/18/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5880263-russia-decline-military-economy-2026/
- Taxes and Government Fees Make Up 25 Percent of Car Rental Fees
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“With gasoline averaging about $4.50 per gallon — over six bucks if you’re unlucky enough to live in California — President Donald Trump proposes a gas tax holiday to give American consumers a bit of relief. A reprieve from taxes is always welcome, but the real bite isn’t the federal 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents on each gallon of diesel fuel. States charge far more, and that’s especially true if you rent a car, with gas taxes the least of the problem. In some places, more than half the tab for car rentals comes from taxes and government-mandated fees.” (05/18/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/18/taxes-and-government-fees-make-up-25-percent-of-car-rental-fees/
- Trump Reigniting Iran War Proves It Was Failure From the Start
Source: Common Dreams
by Trita Parsi“The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran. Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner. Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours. We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed.” (05/18/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-restarting-iran-war
- Kevin Warsh’s Impossible Mission
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul“President Trump’s ‘solution’ to the economic problems facing many Americans is lower interest rates. Jerome Powell, who Warsh is succeeding as Fed chair, has refused to lower rates to the level desired by President Trump. This is a big part of why the president has said he chose not to reappoint Powell. Concerns that Warsh would allow President Trump to dictate monetary policy help explain why only one Democratic Senator voted for Warsh’s confirmation. Lowering rates may slightly reduce credit card and other interest rates paid by consumers. However, it will further erode the dollar’s value, thus further reducing Americans’ real incomes and causing them to go further into debt.” (05/18/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/kevin-warshs-impossible-mission
- Medicine by Captivity: The Rise of the Hostage Physician
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon“I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. … Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true. Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is always how these transformations begin. Patients slowly became ‘throughput issues.’ Beds became ‘capacity management.’ Discharges became ‘flow optimization.’ … Everything slowly started sounding less human and more operational. And eventually, hospitals stopped feeling like places centered around caring for human beings and started feeling like giant processing centers where movement itself became the priority.” (05/18/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/medicine-by-captivity-the-rise-of-the-hostage-physician/
- How Marco Rubio morphed his way into Trump’s inner circle
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Linda Feldmann“As a United States senator from Florida, Marco Rubio was a high-profile ‘neocon’ – a hawk on China and Russia, a strong supporter of Taiwan, Ukraine, and NATO, and an advocate for free trade and human rights. Today, not so much – at least on those issues. As both secretary of State and acting national security adviser, Secretary Rubio is fully on board with President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy: more ‘Art of the Deal’ use of American leverage, including tariffs, less hard-line absolutism with other major powers. Mr. Rubio’s evolution shouldn’t come as a shock. After all, he is no longer his own boss; he works for President Trump – in two key capacities, the first to hold both titles since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.” (05/18/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2026/0518/rubio-trump-foreign-policy
- Nonprofits in the age of doubt
Source: hypertext
by David Dagan“Nonprofits face a series of interlocking crises in the second Trump administration. Most obviously, there are broadsides from the White House: indiscriminate funding cuts for human services providers, targeted pressure campaigns and cuts to research funding for higher education, threats to investigate and prosecute left-leaning philanthropies. But this challenge is layered on top of a deeper crisis of trust.” (05/18/26)
https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/nonprofits-in-the-age-of-doubt
- The Hungry Boar
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“A Parable of Power and Subversive Innovation.” (05/18/26)
- Dems’ idiotic rhetoric on courts reveals what they’re really after
Source: New York Post
by David Harsanyi“The contemporary leftist [sic] is a consequentialist with no limiting principles. After the Virginia Supreme Court stopped the Democrats’ unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now the favorite Democratic Party presidential prospect 2028 in a number of polls, claimed that the court ‘didn’t overturn a map’ but ‘overturned an election.’ ‘The power of the American people, that should be the ultimate check on all three branches,’ she declared. In any other age, vocalizing illiterate nonsense about our system of governance might be an embarrassing career-ending flub. Today, it’s the norm among progressives.” (05/18/26)
- Reason Roundtable, 05/18/26
Source: Reason
“Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie?” (05/18/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/05/18/why-is-trump-trying-to-purge-thomas-massie/
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 05/18/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Will Trump’s Trip to China Change the Course of the Iran War? w/ Patrick Henningsen.” (05/18/26)
- Rising, 05/18/26
Source: The Hill
“Thomas Massie smeared by GOP establishment; MAGA is with him!” (05/18/26)